A 44-year-old man from Tabaquite has been freed of charges of shoot­ing at three po­lice of­fi­cers fol­low­ing de­lays in pros­e­cut­ing his case.

Naresh Hen­drick­son was dis­charged by High Court Mas­ter Adia Mo­hamed dur­ing his suf­fi­cien­cy hear­ing on Wednes­day.

Hen­drick­son had been charged with shoot­ing at PCs Abra­ham Bain, Haresh Bachus, and Anil Mo­hammed with in­tent to cause them griev­ous bod­i­ly harm dur­ing an in­ci­dent near his home in Au­gust 2017. He al­so faced charges of firearm and am­mu­ni­tion pos­ses­sion.

Dur­ing the hear­ing, Hen­drick­son’s lawyer, Tara­dath Singh, ap­plied un­der the Crim­i­nal Pro­ce­dure Rules for his client to be freed, cit­ing the State pros­e­cu­tors’ fail­ure to meet dead­lines for fil­ing ev­i­dence.

Un­der the rules, ac­cused per­sons may be dis­charged if pros­e­cu­tors fail to com­ply with court dead­lines and do not seek ex­ten­sions with­in a rea­son­able time.

Singh ar­gued that the pros­e­cu­tion de­lays did not start when the case was trans­ferred from a mag­is­trate to Mas­ter Mo­hamed un­der the Ad­min­is­tra­tion of Jus­tice (In­dictable Pro­ceed­ings) Act (AJI­PA). The leg­is­la­tion re­placed pro­tract­ed pre­lim­i­nary en­quiries be­fore mag­is­trates with faster suf­fi­cien­cy hear­ings be­fore High Court Mas­ters.

He not­ed that de­lays in pros­e­cut­ing the case be­fore a mag­is­trate had re­sult­ed in the pre­lim­i­nary en­quiry re­main­ing in­com­plete when AJI­PA took ef­fect sev­er­al years ago.

Mas­ter Mo­hamed up­held the ap­pli­ca­tion, rul­ing that it would be un­fair to grant the State an­oth­er ex­ten­sion giv­en that Hen­drick­son had been be­fore the courts for over eight and a half years. - Derek Achong